New 5E Player Race – Goatfolk, Getting Down with these Baaaa-ad boys

Goatfolk. The Beastmen. The Faun. They come by many names across many mediums. The Nerdarchy crew was inspired to create a stubborn, bearded race that wasn’t dwarves. This lead them to write us up a goatfolk 5E player race for your Fifth Edition games and I think we can christen these cloven-hoofed creatures with a proper encounter idea.

Oreamnos, or goatfolk, get the spotlight in Nerdarchy’s Patreon rewards for June 2018. A new player race, monster, magic items, NPC, organization, background and complete adventure ready to drop into your 5E games awaits! [Art by Nelson Vieira]

Goatfolk in your world

Your party has been tasked to collect an ancient arcane scroll atop the sheer cliffs to the north. They’ve been warned of the dreaded goatfolk who have lived in the crags for generations and protect their stolen wisdom from all intruders. This opens up dangerous encounter with fighting on rocky cliff edges against leaping and shoving foes completely at home, keeping the party on the back foot or worse, plummeting down off the side of a mountain.

I played a lot of Diablo growing up and its hard for me to not see goatfolk wielding glaives or longbows. The glaive users leap from rock to rock, bringing down the polearm as they come plummeting down on their opponents and use the hook of the glaive to try and trip foes or simply headbutt them with their thick skulls and curved horns to push them back. All the while the casters and long bowmen rain down support from higher on the cliff face.

If the players survive these skirmishes and get to the goatfolk’s monastery, the party could come to learn that this wise and proud people are simply defending their magical research and their way of life from trespassers down below. Whoever had hired them was trying to steal their magical secrets and now the party might have to make amends by aiding the goatfolk in collecting the materials for a magical ritual to help them stop the decline of their people.

Hopefully this will help spark some creativity so that you feel excited to introduce the goatfolk into your setting, whether you run homebrew or a pre-established world.

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